One recent Viridi installation put 75 battery packs, totaling 3.75 MWh, into a site in 32 hours. The occupants noticed nothing. That job gives a sense of how Budderfly and Viridi expect to reach 100 commercial sites across the United States, a rollout now advancing in Massachusetts, Connecticut and California.
Who is doing what
Budderfly runs an energy-as-a-service business, so it carries the deployment, monitoring and optimization work for its customers. Christian Edwards, the company’s vice president of business development and strategy, said the batteries are managed alongside HVAC, lighting, refrigeration and other loads. “The operational impact is minimal,” he said. Jon Williams, CEO of Viridi, said building occupants typically notice no change, though facility engineers gain more control over when energy is used, stored or drawn from the grid.
Viridi’s modules, the RPS50, are each about the size of a large suitcase and can be wall-mounted or stacked, which makes them workable in tight mechanical rooms. They connect to building systems over BACnet, Modbus, CANbus, DNP3 and serial protocols. A cloud-enabled gateway at the edge of the grid handles on-site communications.
Sizing a battery for a restaurant
Budderfly starts from each site’s own history: consumption, peak events and how the building actually runs. Subbloie, the CEO, used quick-service restaurants as an example. On a hot summer day, air conditioning, refrigeration and kitchen equipment all pull hard at once. A properly sized battery can smooth those spikes, cutting costs.
The bigger obstacle, Williams said, is often the local utility tariff rather than the load. “Some tariffs don’t incentivize load shifting or peak shaving,” he said, and that limits the economics. Edwards named utility interconnection and permission to operate as the slowest part of any project, “typically the longest and least controllable part of the process.”
Because the system is backup rather than primary power, any technician visit can be scheduled without disrupting daily operations. Budderfly monitors the units and fixes most problems remotely, Subbloie said.
Where the money shows up
Edwards said efficiency upgrades and controls cut total usage while batteries optimize timing. Savings appear most clearly in demand charges before and after installation, demand response revenue and avoided outage costs. Newer, high-efficiency HVAC systems and heat pumps gain the most. Budderfly has also acquired Sunverge, a distributed energy management platform, which it says has sharpened site-level demand response and predictive modeling.
The first phase includes two Budderfly-branded units at the Shelton, Connecticut headquarters of OEM Controls, on top of Viridi systems already running at three Dunkin’ and 99 Restaurants locations. Subbloie said the 100-site deal is a step in a multi-phase strategy that “will see deployments to thousands of commercial sites.”
Williams argued that heating and cooling equipment is “the largest load in the built environment,” and that battery storage can offset those peaks and support the grid under extreme conditions.
Sources
- Battery Storage, HVAC, and Energy Flexibility: Inside Budderfly and Viridi’s Nationwide Rollout
- Viridi and Budderfly Partner to Deploy BESS at 100 US Sites
